The debate over Cape Roger Curtis appears to be over. In a letter to Council the owners have indicated that they are proceeding to a 10 acre subdivision of the 600 acre property. As they put it, “We have no interest in exploring any rezoning exercise at this time”.

This is no surprise. Mayor Turner and Councillors Hooper and Poole and their most ardent supporters have engaged in a “take no prisoners” approach to the proposal, rejecting any hope that many of us had for collaboration, consultation and compromise. Mayor Turner’s expressed interest in a park appears to have evaporated. Councillor Poole’s language was enlightening: “it’s time to drown this bylaw” she said, in her statement of support for throwing two years of work and almost $3 million down the drain.

What’s particularly upsetting and depressing about Council’s decision is not that they decided against moving forward with the specifics of the Neighbourhood Plan. It’s the process that they employed – confrontational, adversarial, and ultimately divisive. At the end of the day there was no negotiation, no thoughtful discussion of the merits of social and economic diversity, the value of land protection through the clustering of homes, the need for more than single family housing on Bowen Island and the desirability of seniors housing. The most critical issue seemed to be who had the biggest petition, though all that the “ 650 for Bowen” sheet really claimed was a commitment to existing OCP density.

Municipal staff had created a thoughtful compromise motion that would have permitted Council to move forward on the Neighbourhood Plan, provided that the owners brought their project within OCP density. Even that was unacceptable: Mayor Turner and Councillors Hooper and Poole wanted a complete and utter rejection of the plan – and they had their way. A rescinding of the bylaw — a metaphorical slap in the face to the owners — was their coup de grace, ensuring that only a subdivision of 10 acre lots could be left on the table. Very sad  – a friendly, convivial and engaging debate regarding the issues of relevance would have been a healthy demonstration of community.

In the late 1980s I interviewed “Danny”, a gang member convicted of first degree murder. He told me that he and his accomplice had been trying to settle a dispute with a speed dealer in a small Ontario city. They had gone over to the dealer’s home to sort things out, thinking that although the man was an unpredictable and potentially dangerous person, they had a prior relationship with him and might be able to talk through the disagreement.

It didn’t work out the way they had planned. The two of them had been drinking prior to arrival and had also taken some PCP (not exactly the kind of preparation one would expect for diplomacy). And their host wasn’t willing to debate at all. He pulled a gun the minute they walked in the door, and within a matter of seconds the speed dealer and his accomplice inside were dead, along with a woman in the home who was connected to the two – all three shot and/or stabbed to death, left for police to find — a remarkably bloody scene. Danny and the other gang member were arrested three years later, after information made its way to police from a frightened woman. They were convicted of first degree murder.

What I recall most vividly from the prison interview is what the gang meant to Danny. He said that he found a kind of family with the gang; these were guys he was comfortable with, they were comfortable with him; they weren’t phony, like the people he had to deal with in school or at work. For the first time in his life there was a sense of belonging. I also recall his description of the aftermath of the crime. He and his partner cleaned themselves up, and smoked a few joints to try to calm down; they just couldn’t get to sleep — for months he woke up with nightmares about the killings.

Gangs have been with us forever: alienated and disenfranchised young men finding a common bond in lawlessness, using crime as a lever for the creation of material wealth. Recall Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York, a reasonably accurate depiction of gang violence in New York City in the 1860s – and then fast forward to the streets of Vancouver, where there has been almost a shooting a day for the past two weeks.

The late 1960s and early 1970s provided new opportunities for those involved in gangs and organized crime. The drugs of the third world arrived on the doorstep of the first world; the new availability of global travel had brought North Americans into contact with cannabis and hashish in such places as India, Lebanon and Thailand, cocaine in Colombia and Bolivia, and opium and heroin in Southeast Asia. And some intrepid travellers brought these third world drugs into North America and Western Europe. Although marijuana, cocaine and heroin have been illegal since the early 20th century, there was little traffic in Canada or the United States until the late 60s and early 70s.

And for the last 30 years we have continued to use criminal prohibition as our primary response to distribution and possession of these drugs. Unfortunately, prohibition hands the responsibility for product quality and price over to the gangs, providing them with lucrative and guaranteed profitability. It is entirely fair to say, given this backdrop, that our policies serve to line the pockets of often thuggish drug dealers.

It must also be said, however, that each legal or illegal drug is different, carrying its own risks and potential harms. The greatest irony of our current reality is that individuals are now being shot to death over the trade in cannabis, but it is almost impossible to die from consumption of the drug itself. Ironically, we attach moral condemnation to the consumption and distribution of cannabis, but not to tobacco, a drug with a greater addictive potential, more negative health consequences and unparalleled morbidity.

There is a very real sense in which we go through life with cultural blinders, unable to see the bizarre social constructions that previous generations have created. A good part of a more effective response to gangs would be to remove financially rewarding forms of commerce from their control – and starting with cannabis would be a good place to begin, if there was any political will to do so.

But it will not be enough to change our approach to drugs that are currently illegal. There are some drugs – crack and crystal meth – that are difficult to see as commodities that are capable of any form of regulation, and there remain many other potentially viable means of commerce for gangs and organized crime: identity theft, fraud, human trafficking, and cybercrime are some of the more prominent possibilities. Put differently, we have to recognize that while the regulation of some currently illegal drugs might put a huge dent into the businesses that gangs conduct, that alone cannot solve the problems that we face.

This takes us to the present, and the federal government’s response to gang violence, particularly the recent spate of killings in the city of Vancouver. For some the proposed legislation might seem impressive: a new category of first degree murder for any killing by a gang member, a new mandatory minimum for drive by shootings, and some new minimum penalties for illegal drug distribution.

But put yourself in the position of a gang member on the streets of Vancouver. He is already carrying a handgun and willing to use it on his adversaries; he is already willing to kill and to risk being killed. He’s not at all involved in any consideration of the severe penalties for his crimes, already set out in the Criminal Code. Further, mandatory minimum terms for illegal drug distribution merely increase the costs – and profits — of doing business, costs that will be passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices, and onto gang members in the form of greater profits.

The new legislation will also provide much grist for lawyers and the legal profession. When is an individual properly classified in law as a gang member? What are the constituent elements of a drive-by shooting? What kind of intent is required for conviction for a first degree gang killing? These questions will almost certainly occupy the time of crown counsel, defence counsel, and the judiciary. And there is no evidence that making sentences more severe will provide us with a greater social safety; this should be, after all, the goal of any action that we take.

The keys to success in responding to gang violence have nothing to do with changing penalties, and everything to do with more effective enforcement, and more effective prevention. It’s easy for politicians to change penalties; this has been the dominant response to criminal justice controversies to date. The politician appeases the fear and anger of the citizen by proposing a new penalty, even when existing penalties are already entirely adequate for the task at hand.

If we really want to make a difference to gang violence we need to focus on providing law enforcement with more resources and more effective tools. An important part of this might well be the creation of a regional police force, a body that by its very existence recognizes that crime does not stay neatly within particular jurisdictions. After all, those committing crime do not respect jurisdictional boundaries; it’s important for those who want to control crime to similarly move beyond their individual silos.

The Lower Mainland of British Columbia is the last of Canada’s three major urban areas to move to a regional force. The opposition to date seems to come from some quarters of the RCMP and some city mayors, both apparently concerned about ceding territory and autonomy. Such concerns have major costs attached, however – reduced efficiencies in service and less effective crime control.

And equally, if not more important, in a “big picture” scenario, we need to consider prevention – to address young men at risk, those like Danny, who in the late 1970s saw the gang as an answer to his alienation from the mainstream. The U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has developed a best practices model for addressing existing or emerging youth gang problems, focusing on a strategic planning process for communities with problems, empowering these communities to address a full range of anti-gang programs and activities. There is a wealth of literature on the range of possibilities, and a clear indication that what works in one community may be quite different from what works in another; it can often be former gang members who are the most critical catalysts for change.

At the end of the day, however, putting money into both enforcement and prevention emerges as critical. Key individuals need to be arrested, and key interventions need to be developed for those involved, or at the periphery of gang violence. It’s enforcement and prevention that will ultimately matter, not the enactment of virtually meaningless changes to existing penalty provisions.

(Reprinted from The Globe and Mail)

We’ve seen and heard a lot about gang violence in the past few weeks. Brazen public shootings in Abbotsford, Langley and Kitsilano have increased public fears — and created a seemingly endless round of blame, anger and finger pointing at police, politicians, and the courts. A poll of Vancouver residents has found that only 55 per cent think police are doing a good job of handling crime; the results are much worse for federal and provincial governments, with more than 80 per cent viewing their actions as poor. And the courts fare the worst – almost 90 per cent say they aren’t doing their jobs properly.

Open blogs and forums are a good example of this impatience, “One more shotting (sic) and police chiefs should resign…people think that the sentences handed down by the courts was (sic) too light… well, if 89% of people think this way, shouldn’t the government shut up and put out?…Gordon Campbell get off your backside, stop making excuses, remove that joke Wally Oppal”.

Unfortunately, solving gang violence isn’t simple and many folks just don’t have the patience or insight to understand what’s going on. A carefully constructed study from two Ontario researchers, just released by Attorney–General Wally Oppal, has revealed that B.C. courts are no more lenient than courts in other provinces. As the Attorney-General commented in response to the release of the report, it’s pretty clear that longer sentences are not going to solve the problems of gang warfare. It’s a very complicated mess – those arrested won’t co-operate, witnesses to events won’t come forward, and the gangs themselves are neither limited to any city or community nor do they self-identify in any way; they are, as a consequence, very difficult to infiltrate, and to secure convictions against.

In fact, the problems of gang violence cannot be fairly laid at the feet of the courts, Premier Campbell, or Attorney-General Oppal. Look at the issue from the perspective of the young man who is carrying a gun and prepared to use it on his rivals. He’s prepared to risk death to accomplish his goals; he doesn’t care about the penalties that courts might impose, and his failure to co-operate with police does not reflect any weaknesses or inadequacies on the part of the federal or provincial governments or the police.

For as long as we have been keeping reliable police data on homicides (from the 1960s to the present) we’ve seen that homicide rates vary consistently across Canada. British Columbia has typically had, for example, about five times as many murders per capita as Newfoundland. This is a very important piece of evidence; it demonstrates that what is driving the murder rate is not the penalties for homicide – they are exactly the same in both locations. The difference is in the culture of Newfoundland and the culture of British Columbia. We might want to believe that the penalties prescribed by our courts and governments produce the violence we observe, but the best evidence just doesn’t support that claim.

What are the solutions? The Premier and the Attorney-General are quite properly committing funding to police resources, to improve intelligence gathering, and to improve the possibilities for arrest and conviction, in response to these actions. But law enforcement (and the rest of us, in our various communities) will need to focus not only on arrest, but also on prevention. As West Vancouver police chief Kash Heed has said, we must not only be tough on gangs, but equally tough on the social conditions that breed them. Heed calls for two simultaneous approaches, “a regional gang-suppression strategy” focussed on intervention and prevention, and “moving law enforcement from being random and reactive to proactive and sustained”.

It’s an important point. The gangs don’t respect the boundaries of police jurisdictions – and the response to them has to be similarly non-territorial. What’s most important, however, is to stop pointing fingers at those who are clearly committed to eradicating the problems of gang violence from our communities: our police officers, municipal, provincial and federal politicians, and our courts. The young men who are carrying guns and killing each other, ostensibly over the profits from illegal drugs, grew up, for the most part, amongst us, in our communities. If we can better understand and prevent the the trajectory from childhood to a violent machismo, we will be taking an important step towards solving the problem. Not an easy task, but a lot more productive than the simple and inappropriate solution of blaming our police officers, our politicians and our judges.

Reprinted from the Vancouver Sun, February 13, 2009

Ok, so this isn’t today, but it certainly wasn’t long ago and several feet of snow remain.

Three recent items in the news make the point that the tenets of science continue to suffer humiliating defeats at the hands of an unthinking moralism. First, San Diego television weatherman John Coleman is invited by CNN’s Lou Dobbs to debate global warming; his opponent is a scientist, trained in climatology. Second, opposition mounts to bus ads proclaiming, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”. Third, Michael Phelps, celebrated Olympian, confesses to letting young people down by inhaling marijuana from a rather large bong.

It seems fair to note that inviting a meteorologist to debate global warming is a little like asking a welder to debate the science of metallurgy. But Lou Dobbs, as a denier of global warming, has no reservations in extending an invitation to a man who has no knowledge of the science of climate change. Not surprisingly, Coleman’s evidence is mostly ad hominem attacks against what he calls the “fraud” of global warming. And then there is the “controversy” of advertisements that, sensibly enough, and in a rather understated manner, convey the point that the evidence for God’s existence is rather tenuous. As Richard Dawkins quite fairly puts it, theistic beliefs are something akin to a belief in flying teapots. Finally, pity poor Michael Phelps. He was arrested for drunk driving in 2004, but that action was apparently a relatively trivial matter. The act of smoking marijuana, though much less risk to an individual’s health than either impaired driving or tobacco smoking, is said to have sent a devastating message to young people. Tobacco and alcohol have the status of nice first world drugs, sold by companies with a thoughtful integrity. Never mind that the consumption of these nice drugs leads to tens of thousands of deaths every year in Canada alone — a statistic that cannabis cannot hope to rival, even when rates of use are factored into the equation. As Tabatha Southey has written, Phelps’ real “crime” is dorkiness. She puts it nicely and with a hint of facetiousness, “I like to think that years from now, long after we’ve seen sense and marijuana is sold legally across the drugstore counter, it will still be considered a bad idea to be photographed taking a hit from a big, glass bong at a party.” Fair enough. Or as The Wire’s Omar Little would have said, “True dat”.

I am writing regarding your upcoming decision with respect to the proposed artificial turf field. The issue has certainly been quite polarizing in our community, with both firmly entrenched support and similarly entrenched opposition.

It is now your task to decide. The project has been attacked for its cost, its support of an artificial playing surface, its affront to “rural” values, its negative health and environmental impacts, its support of urbanization, and the reality that it will require the removal of several trees.

As you know, the funds for this project come from a part of our recreation reserves, earmarked specifically for the improvement of outdoor facilities, and from provincial government grants; there is no cost imposed — no burden on the taxpayer. The issues of health and environmental impacts are similarly specious: a recent report from Vancouver Coastal Health has concluded that there are no significant health concerns related to artificial turf fields. The removal of several trees is required, but new trees will be planted to replace those taken down. I might add that trees are often taken down on Bowen Island for a variety of reasons, most of which are rarely questioned, and are usually more related to individual interests, rather than any collective interest: improvement of view, increase in access to ambient light, the provision of firewood, the protection of utility lines. The environmental equation has been set out clearly by former councillor David Hocking and James Glave. As James Glave puts it, “…some of the aspects of our place that we hold dear are, in fact, fanning the flames. We are not “greener” than mainlanders just because we look that color to those peering our way from across the channel. When it comes to the challenge that looms largest overhead, the hue is a tragic illusion….in reality, we’re browner.”

But the hub of the turf field controversy isn’t to be found in discussions of tree-cutting, costs, and health or environmental impacts. It’s about our “rural” way of life, and the argument that an artificial turf field, with its possibilities for evening recreation, is inconsistent with who we are and why we moved here.

But what does it mean to say we are rural? Rural is typically defined as characteristic of farming or country life, or referring to “large and isolated areas of a country”. We fit neither of these definitions (though it would certainly be desireable if we could produce a good deal more of our own food). We are intimately linked to one of the largest cities in Canada, economically, socially and culturally. This doesn’t mean that we should imitate the urban landscapes of this city, allowing fast food outlets, six storey apartments, and rapid population growth. But let’s stop claiming we’re rural; our reality is a good deal more complex than that.

And let’s put the turf field in perspective. Why is there such virulent opposition to this small piece of plastic? There is no opposition to the plastic floor in the school gymnasium, the plastic chairs that populate Bowen’s outdoor spaces, the plastic in our homes, our cars, and our workplaces.

The reality is that an artificial field will reduce the carbon footprint of those who live here, will create opportunities for healthy recreation, and will foster both family and community. I confess that I am something of a carbon pig; I drive to my office at the university three times a week, I fly great distances across the globe five or six times each year. I am sorry about this (well, sort of), but I view my support for the field as some small measure of atonement for my sins.

In any event, please don’t delay any further in making the decision regarding the field, and don’t deceive yourselves into thinking that the community might be able to reach consensus on this issue; the last several months have made the limitations of such a hope abundantly clear.

From CBC

During question period, Harper also accused Dion, NDP Leader Jack Layton and Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe of deliberately avoiding being photographed in front of a Canadian flag during Monday’s signing ceremony of the agreement between the parties.

Video and photographs of the event, however, clearly showed at least two Canadian flags behind the three leaders.

As Canada slips and slides towards higher rates of unemployment, many are asking whether this will increase crime. The simple answer is that unemployment and crime rates are not systematically related. It’s not that poverty is unrelated to crime, but it’s just not possible to find any meaningful statistical relationship between changing rates of unemployment and changing rates of crime over the past 50 years.

If, on the other hand, you start looking at our jail populations, you begin to see familiar portraits: most are male, working class or poorer, with little education and few social skills. Poverty is a variable of relevance, but changing rates of employment don’t appear to be critical. Consider, for example, homicide in Canada. For the past 50 years British Columbia has had a rate of killing that is five times that of Newfoundland – a province that for decades languished under double digit unemployment. What drives homicide rates (and most other crime rates) is not unemployment, or even poverty, but two more important variables: culture and demographic shifts.

The culture of British Columbia is quite different from that of Newfoundland – the west has less community, a more transient population, and an established network of young men who use handguns as their tool of last resort in business transactions. The penalties for crime don’t vary from east to west, but culture and community do – and they are more critical.

Second, more than 70 per cent of all crime, in every country in the world, is committed by young men between the ages of 15 and 29. If the percentage of the male population between these ages either increases or shrinks, crime rates will rise and fall accordingly. When crime in Canada began to rise in the late 1960s, it was because of the surge of the baby boomers. In 1976 young men between 18 and 29 made up 10 per cent of the Canadian population; today they represent less than 5 per cent. When crime rates began to fall in the early 1990s it was no surprise; the tail end of the surge of the baby boomers, those born in 1964, left their crime prone years in 1993.

In other words, tough economic times are not going to drive our crime rates down, or through the roof. Meaningful change depends on our culture and the communities we create – and, unfortunately, on the prevalence of young men in our populations.